I guess the author forgot about the part where they developed rockets that are actually 10 years ahead of anyone else's.
I don't think they're doubting that Musk is also capable of building a company that actually achieves results. Everybody knows this by now. I think the key argument is that he's also a master promoter and that that skill is underappreciated compared to the engineering angle.
The way I read the article, it's suggesting that if you start by to coming up with the best possible VC pitch for a moonshot business, and let everything follow from that, you'd get pretty close to Musk's approach.
The recent test flights of Starship prototypes is a good example. No one knew for sure when Spacex would have the belly flop maneuver mastered, but as long as no one gets hurt and he spends his own money, no one cares. Next they have to master successful launch into space, successful booster recovery, successful orbital rendezvous and docking, successful lunar landing, successful long-term life support, and successful high speed atmospheric reentry. All of these are very daunting technical challenges for a totally new spacecraft.
When will the money run out?
It won't? They've secured a pretty good revenue stream with their satellite launch business + Starlink.
This is what angers me about articles like this. Yes, SpaceX attracted lots of interest because of its ambitious mission statement. No, that mission statement wasn't a bunch of empty statements like it typically is for most businesses. SpaceX is consistently following the path it outlined, the path from reusability, through launch business, pouring all the money into R&D for the ultimate goal of opening up access to Mars. I would've thought that after so many years, the skeptics would figure out the company is serious about it.
Though an alternate narrative is he arguably used public money through government credits:
These opportunities to leverage government programs, some designed for people much further down the income ladder, have driven Musk throughout his career: The megabillionaire built his companies on the backs of enormous government subsidies, tax breaks, and exclusive contracts. A 2015 Los Angeles Times investigation estimated that Tesla, SolarCity, and SpaceX had together benefited from “$4.9 billion in government support.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/160500/elon-musks-big-govern...
// Note: Consider sources
Yet all we see is boeing and others gobbling up the same funds with no/bad results. No point in discussing EVs since there companies were actively against it.
There are two different programs to help make transport more green. Tax credits for EV, Tesla took advantage of them and so did other companies. These credits clearly had the effect desired by the government of promoting EVs. The benefit went primary to consumers.
Then there are air quality credits that again apply to the whole market and every company has the opportunity to make money on a level playing field. I would think improving air quality is a good thing and they exact type of regulation the left is always in favor of.
SpaceX was private bootstrap and then received a government contract that required them to develop significant advanced spacecraft and launch it 20 times. SpaceX proposal was by far the cheapest and technologically the most advanced. Its not a subsidy its simply a government contract and not an exclusive one. Every single investigation done at NASA or GAO showed that this contract saved the government money.
If you want evidence from a reasonably neutral observer, take Sandy Munro (himself an engineer who has worked on everything from cars to aeroplanes). He recently interviewed Elon, ostensibly about Tesla but the interview was in a meeting room at SpaceX. After the interview he was invited to a two hour design review meeting and was "blown away" at Elon's depth of involvement.
https://youtu.be/S1nc_chrNQk?t=370 (6:10 to 8:45)
I have no ideas about the depth of his technical knowledge at both companies, but the titles themselves don't hold much value when he gave them himself.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/7/22424592/tesla-elon-musk-a...
In this respect I'd imagine he's more akin to an overly excited tech geek who loves to obsess over the progress made by Andrej Karpathy and his team, but is otherwise leaving them alone to do their thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-bezos-idUSKBN1772ZQ